menu_book Chapter 5

CHAPTER V. We go into Kentucky. After being thoroughly reorganized at Tupelo and the troops had recovered their health and spirits, we made an advance into Kentucky. We took the cars at Tupelo and went to Mobile, from thence across Mobile

Bay to Montgomery, Alabama, then to Atlanta, from there to Chattanooga, and then over the mountains afoot to the bluegrass regions of Kentucky, the dark and bloody ground. Please remember, patient reader, that I write entirely from memory. I have no data or diary or anything to go by, and memory is a peculiar

faculty. I find that I cannot remember towns and battles and remember only the little things. I remember how gladly the citizens of Kentucky received us. I thought they had the prettiest girls that God ever made.

They could not do too much for us. They had heaps and stacks of cooked rations along our route, with wine and cider everywhere, and the glad shouts of, Hurrah for our Southern boys! greeted and welcomed us at every house. Ah, the boys felt like soldiers again.

The bands played merrier and livelier tunes. It was the patient convalescing. The fever had left him. He was getting fat and strong. The old fire was seen to illuminate his eyes.

His step was buoyant and proud. He felt ashamed that he had ever been so hacked. He could fight now. It was the same old proud soldier of yore. The bands played Dixie and the Bonnie Blue Flag.

The citizens cheered, and the ladies waved their handkerchiefs and threw us bouquets. Ah, those were the Hallison days, and your old soldier-kind reader loves to recall that happy period. Mumfersville had been captured with five thousand prisoners. New recruits were continually joining our ranks. Camp Dick Robinson, that immense pile of army stores, had fallen into our hands.

We rode upon the summit of the wave of success. The boys had got clean clothes and had their faces washed. I saw then what I had long since forgotten, a cockade. The Kentucky girls made cockades for us, and almost every soldier had one pinned on his hat. But stirring events were hastening on.

The black cloud of battle and war had begun then to appear much larger than a man's hand. In fact, we could see the lightning flash and hear the thunder roar. We were at Harrodsburg. The Yankees were approaching Perryville under General Buell. The Yankees had been dogging our rear, picking up our stragglers and capturing some of our wagon trains.

The good time that we were having was too good to last. We were in an ecstasy akin to heaven. We were happy. The troops were jubilant. Our manhood blood pulsated more warmly.

Our patriotism was awakened. Our pride was renewed and stood ready for any emergency. We felt that one southern man could whip twenty Yankees. All was lovely and the goose hung high. We went to dances and parties every night.

When General Chalmers marched to Perryville, in flanking and surrounding Mumford'sville, we marched the whole night long. We, the private soldiers, did not know what was going on among the generals. All that we had to do was to march, march, march. It mattered not how tired, hungry or thirsty we were.

All that we had to do was to march that whole night long, and every staff officer who would pass. He would say, Hey, mister, how far is it to Mumford'sville? He would answer, Five miles. It seemed to me we travelled a hundred miles, and we were always within five miles of Mumford'sville.

That night we heard a volley of musketry in our immediate front and did not know what it meant. But soon we came to where a few soldiers had lighted some candles and were holding them over the body of a dead soldier. It was Captain Allison, if I remember rightly, of General Cheatham's staff.

He was very bloody, and had his clothes riddled with balls. I heard that he rode on in front of the advance guard of our army, and had no doubt discovered the Yankee picket and come galloping back at full speed in the dark when our advance guard fired on and killed him. We laid down in a graveyard that night and slept, and when we awoke the sun was high

in the heavens, shining on our faces. Mumford'sville had surrendered. The next day Dr. C.T. Quintard let me ride his horse nearly all day while he walked with the web feet. The Battle of Perryville

In giving a description of this most memorable battle, I do not pretend to give you figures and describe how this general looked and how that one spoke and the other one charged with drawn sabre, etc. I know nothing of these things. See the history for that.

I was simply a soldier of the line, and I only write of the things I saw. I was in every battle, skirmish and march that was made by the 1st Tennessee Regiment during the war, and I do not remember of a harder contest and more evenly fought battle than that of Perryville. If it had been two men wrestling, it would have been called a dog fall.

Both sides claimed the victory. Both whipped. I stood picket in Perryville the night before the battle. A Yankee on one side of the street, an eye on the other. We got very friendly during the night and made a raid upon a citizen's pantry where

we captured a bucket of honey, a pitcher of sweet milk and three or four biscuits. The old citizen was not at home. He and his old household had gone visiting, I believe. In fact, I think all of the citizens of Perryville were taken with a sudden notion of promiscuous visiting about this time.

At least they were not at home to all callers. At length the morning dawned. Our line was drawn up on one side of Perryville, the Yankee army on the other. The two enemies that were soon to meet in deadly embrace seemed to be eyeing each other. The blue coats lined the hillside in plain view.

You could count the number of their regiments by the number of their flags. We could see the huge war dogs frowning at us, ready at any moment to belch forth their fire and smoke and hurl their thunderbolts of iron and death in our very midst. I wondered why the fighting did not begin. Never on earth were our troops more eager for the engagement to open.

The Yankees commenced to march toward their left and we marched almost parallel to our right, both sides watching each other's maneuvers and movements. It was but the lull that precedes the storm. Colonel Field was commanding our brigade and Lieutenant Colonel Patterson our regiment. About twelve o'clock while we were marching through a cornfield in which the corn had

been shocked, they opened their war dogs upon us. The beginning of the end had come. Here is where Captain John F. Wheeles was wounded and three others, whose names I have forgotten. The battle now opened in earnest and from one end of the line to the other seemed to

be a solid sheet of blazing smoke and fire. Our regiment crossed a stream being preceded by Wharton's Texas Rangers and we were ordered to attack at once with vigor. Here General Maney's horse was shot. From this moment the battle was a mortal struggle.

Two lines of battle confronted us. We killed almost everyone in the first line and were soon charging over the second, when right in our immediate front was their third and main line of battle from which four Napoleon guns poured their deadly fire. We did not recoil, but our line was fairly hurled back by the leaden hail that was poured

into our very faces. Our great color bearers were killed at one discharge of their cannon. We were right up among the very wheels of their Napoleon guns. It was death to retreat now to either side. Our Lieutenant Colonel Patterson hallowed to charge and take their guns and we were

soon in a hand-to-hand fight, every man for himself, using the butts of our guns and bayonets. One side would waver and fall back a few yards and would rally, when the other side would fall back leaving the four Napoleon guns, and yet the battle raged. Obstinate fighting I had never seen before or since.

The guns were discharged so rapidly that it seemed the earth itself was in a volcanic uproar. The iron storm passed through our ranks, mangling and tearing men to pieces. The very air seemed full of stifling smoke and fire, which seemed the very pit of hell peopled by contending demons.

Our men were dead and dying right in the very midst of this grand havoc of battle. It was a life to life and death to death grapple. The sun was poised above us, a great red ball sinking slowly in the west, yet the scene of battle and carnage continued. I cannot describe it.

The mantle of night fell upon the scene. I do not know which side whipped, but I know that I helped bring off those four Napoleon guns that night, that we were mighty easy about it. They were given to Turner's Battery of our brigade and had the name of our Lieutenant Colonel Patterson and our color bearer Mitchell, both of whom were killed, inscribed on two

of the pieces. I have forgotten the names inscribed on the other two pieces. I saw those very four guns surrendered at Missionary Ridge, but of this another time. The Battle of Perryville presented a strange scene. The dead, dying, and wounded of both armies, Confederate and Federal, were blended in an

extricable confusion. Now and then a cluster of dead Yankees and close by a cluster of dead rebels. It was like the Englishman's grog, off and off. Now if you wish, kind reader, to find out how many were killed and wounded, I refer you to the histories.

I remember one little incident that I laughed at while in the very midst of battle. We were charging through an old citizen's yard when a big yellow curd dog ran out and commenced snapping at the soldiers' legs, they kicking at him to keep him off. The next morning he was lying near the same place, but he was a dead dog. I helped bring off our wounded that night.

We worked the whole night. The next morning about daylight a wounded comrade, Sam Campbell, complained of being cold and asked me to lie down beside him. I did so and was soon asleep. When I awoke the poor fellow was stiff and cold and death.

His spirit had flown to its home beyond the skies. After the battle was over John T. Tucker, Scott Stevens, A.S. Horsley, and I were detailed to bring off our wounded that night, and we helped to bring off many a poor dying comrade. Joe Thompson, Billy Bond, Byron Richardson, the two Allen boys, brothers, killed side by side, and Colonel Patterson, who was killed standing right by my side.

He was first shot through the hand and was wrapping his handkerchief around it when another ball struck and killed him. I saw W.J. Whittorn, then a stripling boy of fifteen years of age, fall, shot through the neck and collarbone. He fell, apparently dead.

When I saw him all at once jump up, grab his gun, and commence loading and firing, and I heard him say, Damn him! I'll fight him as long as I live. Whitt thought he was killed, but he is living yet.

We helped bring off a man by the name of Hodge with his under-jaw shot off and his tongue lolling out. We brought off Captain Lute B. Irvine. Lute was shot through the lungs and was vomiting blood all the while and begging us to lay him down and let him die, but Lute is living yet.

Also Lieutenant Walridge, with both eyes shot out, I found him rambling in a briar patch. About fifty members of the Rock City Guards were killed and nearly one hundred wounded. They were led by Captains W.D. Kelly, Wheeles, and Steele. Lieutenant Thomas H. Manney was badly wounded. I saw dead on the battlefield a Federal General by the name of Jackson.

It was his brigade that fought us so obstinately at this place, and I did hear that they were made up in Kentucky. Colonel Field, then commanding our brigade, and on his fine gray mare, rode up almost face to face with General Jackson before he was killed, and Colonel Field was shooting all the time with his seven-shooting rifle.

I cannot tell the one half, or even remember at this late date, the scenes of blood and suffering that I witnessed on the battlefield of Perryville, but its history, like all a balance, has gone into the history of the war, and it has been twenty years ago, and I write entirely from memory. I remember Lieutenant Joe P. Lee and Captain W.C.

Flournoy standing right to the muzzle of the Napoleon guns, and the next moment seemed to be enveloped in smoke and fire from the discharge of the cannon. When the regiment recoiled into the heavy firing and at the first charge, Billy Webster and I dropped behind a large oak tree and continued to fire at the Yankees until the regiment was again charging upon the four Napoleon guns, heavily supported by infantry.

We were not more than twenty paces from them, and here I was shot through the hat and cartridge box. I remember this because at that time Billy and I were in advance of our line, and whenever we saw a Yankee rise to shoot, we shot him. And I desire to mention here that a braver or more noble boy was never created on earth

than was Billy Webster. Everybody liked him. He was the flower and chivalry of our regiment. His record as a brave and noble boy will ever live in the hearts of his old comrades that served with him in Company H. He is up yonder now, and we shall meet again.

In these memoirs I only tell what I saw myself, and in this way the world will know the truth. Now, citizen, let me tell you what you never heard before, and this is this. There were many men with a rank and pay of general who were not generals. There were many men with a rank and pay of privates who would have honored and adorned the name of general.

Now I will state further that a private soldier was a private. It mattered not how ignorant a corporal might be, he was always right. It mattered not how intelligent the private might be, and so on up. The sergeant was right over the corporal, the sergeant major over the sergeant, the lieutenant over him, and the captain over him, and the major over him, and the colonel

over him, and the general over him, and so on to Jeff Davis. You see, a private had no right to know anything, and that is why generals did all the fighting, and that is today why generals and colonels and captains are great men. They fought the battles of our country. The privates did not.

The generals risked their reputation, the private soldier his life. No one ever saw a private in battle. His history would never be written. It was the generals that everybody saw charged such and such with drawn saber, his eyes flashing fire, his nostrils dilated, and his clarion voice ringing above the din of the battle

in a horn over the left. Little John's and Marsh Pinkard would have made generals that would have distinguished themselves and been an honor to the country. I know today many a private who would have made a good general. I know of many a general who was better fitted to be excused from detail and fights to hang

around a camp and draw rations for the company. A private had no way to distinguish himself. He had to keep and ranks either in a charge or a retreat. But now as the generals and colonels fill all the positions of honor and emoluments, the least I say the better.

The Retreat Out of Kentucky From Perryville we went to Camp Dick Robinson and drew three days rations and then set fire to and destroyed all those great deposits of army stores which would have supplied the South for a year. We ate those rations and commenced our retreat out of Kentucky with empty haversacks and

still emptier stomachs. We supposed our general and commissaries knew what they were doing and at night we would again draw rations but we didn't. The Yankee cavalry are worrying our rear guards. There is danger of an attack at any moment.

No soldier is allowed to break ranks. We thought, well surely we will draw rations tonight but we didn't. We are marching for Cumberland Gap. The country has long ago been made desolate by the alternate occupation of both armies. There are no provisions in the country.

It has long since been laid waste. We wanted rations but we did not get them. Fourth day out, Cumberland Gap in the distance, a great indenture in the ranges of Cumberland Mountains. The scene was grand.

But grand scenery had but little attraction for a hungry soldier. Surely we will get rations at Cumberland Gap. Toylan up the hill and when halfway up the hill, Halt! March back down to the foot of the hill to defend the cavalry. I was hungry.

A cavalryman was passing our regiment with a pile of scorched dough on the pummel of his saddle. Says I, Halt! I am going to have a paddock of that bread. Don't give it to him, don't give it to him, was yelled from all sides.

I cocked my gun and was about to raise it to my shoulder when he handed me over a paddock of scorched dough and every fellow in Company H made a grab for it and I only got about two or three mouthfuls. About dark a wild heifer ran by our regiment and I pulled down on her. We killed and skinned her and I cut off about five pounds of hind quarter.

In three minutes there was no sign of that beef left to tell the tale. We ate that beef raw and without salt. Only eight miles now to Cumberland Gap and we will get rations now. But we didn't. We descended the mountain on the southern side.

No rations yet. Well, says I, this won't do me. I'm going to hunt something to eat, brag or no brag. I turned off the road and struck out through the country, but had gone but a short distance before I came across a group of soldiers clambering over something.

It was Tom Tuck with a barrel of sorghum that he had captured from a good Union man. He was selling it out at five dollars a quart. I paid my five dollars and by pushing and scrounging I finally got my quart. I sat down and drank it. It was bully.

It was not so good. It was not worth a cent. I was sick and have never loved sorghum since. Down the route it was nothing but tramp, tramp, tramp and no sound or noise but the same inevitable monotonous tramp, tramp, tramp uphill and downhill through long and dusty

lanes weary, worn out and hungry. No cheerful warble of a merry songster would ever greet our ears. It was always tramp, tramp, tramp. You might every now and then hear the occasional words close up. But outside of that it was still the same tramp, tramp, tramp.

I have seen soldiers fast asleep and no doubt dreaming of home and loved ones there as they staggered along in their places in the ranks. I know that on many a weary night's march I have slept and slept soundly while marching along in my proper place in the ranks of the company, stepping to the same step as the soldier in front of me did.

Sometimes when weary, broken down and worn out, some member of the regiment would start a tune and every man would join in. John Branch was usually the leader of the choir. He would commence a beautiful tune. The words as I remember them now were, Dear Paul, just twenty years ago.

After singing this piece he would commence on a lively spirit-stirring air to the tune of Old Uncle Ned. Now reader, it has been twenty years ago since I heard it, but I can remember a part of it now. Here it is.

There was an ancient individual whose cognomen was Uncle Edward. He departed this life long since, long since. He had no capillary substance on the top of his cranium, the place where the capillary substance ought to vegetate. His digits were as long as the bamboo piscatorial implement of the southern Mississippi.

He had no oculars to observe the beauties of nature. He had no ossified formation to masticate his daily rations, so he had to let his daily rations pass by with impunity. Walter Coleman raises the tune of Iza Guana, John the Rebel Band, The Fighting for My Home. The above is all I can now remember of that very beautiful and soul-stirring air.

But the boys would wake up and step quicker and livelier for some time, and Arthur Fulgram would holla out, All right, go ahead, and then would toot, toot as if the cars were starting puff, puff, puff, and then he would say, Tickets, gentlemen, tickets, gentlemen, like it was conductor on a train of cars. This little episode would be over, and then would commence the same tramp, tramp, tramp

all night long. Step by step, step by step, we continued to plod and nod and stagger and march, tramp, tramp, tramp. After a while we would see the morning star rise in the east, and then after a while the dim gray twilight, and finally we could discover the outlines of our file-leader, and after

a while could make out the outlines of trees and other objects. And as it would get lighter and lighter, and day would be about to break, cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo, would come from Tom Tuck's rooster. Tom carried a game rooster that he called Fed for Confederacy all through the war in a haversack.

And then the sun would begin to shoot his slender rays a-thwart the eastern sky, and the boys would wake up and begin laughing and talking as if they had just risen from a good feather bed, and were perfectly refreshed and happy. We would usually stop at some branch or other about breakfast time, and all wash our hands and faces and eat breakfast if we had any, and then commence our weary march again.

If we were halted for one minute, every soldier would drop down and, resting on his knapsack, would go to sleep. Sometimes the sleeping soldiers were made to get up to let some general and his staff pass by, but whenever that was the case the general always got a worse cursing than when Noah cursed his son Ham black and blue.

I heard Jesse Eli do this once. We march on. The scene of a few days ago comes unbidden to my mind. Tramp, tramp, tramp, the soldiers are marching. Where are many of my old friends and comrades whose names were so familiar at every roll

call, and whose familiar here is no more? They lie yonder at Perryville, unburied on the field of battle. They lie where they fell. More than three hundred and fifty members of my regiment, the 1st Tennessee, numbered among the killed and wounded.

One hundred and eighty-five slain on the field of battle. Who are they? Even then I had to try to think up the names of all the slain of Company H alone. Their spirits seem to be with us on the march, but we know that their souls are with their God.

Their bones today no doubt bleach upon the battlefield. They left their homes, families, and loved ones a little more than one short twelve months ago, dressed in their gray uniforms, amid the applause and cheering farewells of those same friends. They lie yonder.

No friendly hands ever close their eyes in death. No kind, gentle, and loving mother was there to shed a tear over and say farewell to her darling boy. No sister's gentle touch ever wiped the death damp from off their dying brows. Brave boys!

They willingly gave their lives to their country's cause. Their bodies and bones are mangled and torn by the rude missiles of war. They sleep the sleep of the brave. They have given their all to their country. We miss them from our ranks.

There are no more hard marches and scant rations for them. They have accomplished all that could be required of them. They are no more. Their names are soon forgotten. They are put down in the roll book as killed.

They are forgotten. We will see them no more till the last revelry on the last morning of the final resurrection. Soldiers, comrades, friends, noble boys, farewell. We shall meet no more on earth, but up yonder some day we will have a grand reunion. Knoxville

The first night after crossing Cumberland Gap, I have forgotten the date, but I know it was very early in the fall of the year. We had no frost or cold weather, and our marches all through Kentucky had been characterized by very dry weather, it not having drained a drop on us during the whole time. About four o'clock in the morning it began to snow, and the next morning the ground was

covered with a deep snow. The trees and the grass and everything of the vegetable kingdom still green. When we got back to Knoxville we were the lousiest, dirtiest, raggedest-looking rebels you ever saw. I had been shot through the hat and cartridge box at Perryville and had both on, and the

clothing I had then on was all that I had in the world. William A. Hughes and I were walking up the street looking at the stores, etc., when we met two of the prettiest girls I ever saw. They ran forward with smiling faces and seemed very glad to see us. I thought they were old acquaintances of Hughes, and Hughes thought they were old acquaintances

of mine. We were soon laughing and talking as if we had been old friends, when one of the young ladies spoke up and said, Gentlemen, there is a supper for the soldiers at the Ladies Association rooms, and we are sent out to bring in all the soldiers we can find.

We spoke up quickly and said, Thank you, thank you, young ladies. And I picked out the prettiest one and said, Please take my arm, which she did. And Hughes did the same with the other one, and we went on in that style down the street. I imagine we were a funny-looking sight.

I know one thing, I felt good all over and as proud as a boy with his first pants. And when we got to that supper room, those young ladies waited on us, and we felt as grand as kings. To you, ladies, I say, God bless you. Ah, Sneak

Almost every soldier in the army, generals, colonels, captains, as well as privates, had a nickname. And I almost believe that had the war continued ten years, we would have forgotten our proper names. John T. Tucker was called Sneak.

A.S. Horsley was called Don Von One Horsley. W.A. Hughes was called Applejack. John Reeves was called Devil Horse. The surgeon of our regiment was called Old Snake. Bob Brank was called Count.

The colonel of the fourth was called Guidepost. E.L. Lansdowne was called Left Tenant. Some were called by the name of Greasy, some Buzzard, others Hog, and Brutus, and Cassius, and Caesar, Left Center, and Boulder Dust, and Old Hannah. In fact, the nicknames were singular and peculiar.

And when a man got a nickname, it stuck to him like the old man of the sea did to the shoulders of Sin-Mad the sailor. On our retreat, the soldiers got very thirsty for tobacco. They always used the word thirsty. And they would sometimes come across an old field off which the tobacco had been cut,

and the suckers had re-sprouted from the old stock and would cut off those suckers and dry them by the fire and chew them. Sneak had somehow or other got hold of a plug or two, and knowing that he would be begged for a chew, had cut it up in little bits of pieces about one-fourth of a chew. Some fellow would say, Sneak, please give me a chew of tobacco.

Sneak would say, I don't believe I have a piece left. And then he would begin to feel in his pockets. He would pull that hand out and feel in another pocket, and then in his coat pockets, and hit away down in an odd corner of his vest pocket he would accidentally find a little chew just big enough to make spit come.

Sneak had his pockets full all the time. The boys soon found out his innuendos and sub-trafuges, but John would all the time appear as innocent of having tobacco as a pet lamb that has just torn down a nice vine that you were so careful in training to run over the front porch. Ah, John, don't deny it now.

I joined the cavalry. When we got to Charleston on the Hwassee River, there we found the first Tennessee cavalry both of which had been made up principally in Murray County, and we knew all the boys. We had a good old-fashioned handshaking all around. Then I wanted to join the cavalry.

Captain Aza G. Freeman had an extra horse, and I got on him and joined the cavalry for several days, but all the time some passing cavalryman would make some jacoste remark about here is a webfoot who wants to join the cavalry and has got a bayonet on his gun and a knapsack on his back. I felt like I had got into the wrong pen, but anyhow I got to ride all of three days.

I remember that Mr. Willis B. Embry gave me a five-pound package of Kilikinick smoking tobacco for which I was very grateful. I think he was quartermaster of the first Tennessee cavalry and as good a man and as clever a person as I ever knew. None knew him but to love him.

I was told that he was killed by a lot of Yankee soldiers after he had surrendered to them all the time begging for his life asking them please not kill him. But he that noteth the sparrow's fall doeth all things well. Not one ever falls to the ground with his consent.